Michio Fukuoka

Michio Fukuoka (Japanese: 福岡道雄 Fukuoka Michio; 1936 – 15 November 2023) was a Japanese sculptor.^[1]

Michio Fukuoka
Born	1936 (1936) Sakai, Japan
Died	15 November 2023 (aged 87)
Nationality	Japanese
Occupation	Sculptor

Biography

Born in Sakai in 1936, Fukuoka was a professor of fine arts at Kansai University.^[2] He began his career in the 1950s by making plaster casts of holes he had dug in sand.^[3] In the 1960s, he created a series of sculptures resembling balloons floating in the air.^[3] In the 1970s, Michio Fukuoka produced gigantic sculptures of moths in different positions.^[3] In the 1980s, he became more focused on self-portraits in landscapes, in which he was gardening or fishing.^[3] He also created a series of wooden boxes his size, which represented coffins.^[3] In the 1990s, he created black plastic panels on which he engraved the same sentence hundreds of times in white.^[3] In the 2000s, he sculpted the "Rotten Balls", which vaguely represented testicles.^[3] In 2005, he retired from sculpting.^[4]

Fukuoka died on 15 November 2023, at the age of 87.^[5]